Dunn’s thesis is that the Tidewater slave-holding aristocracy, hewing to the agrarian, small-government ideals of Thomas Jefferson, held back the state’s progress. While northern states embarked upon internal improvements, encouraged manufacturing and educated its citizens, Virginia’s aristocracy restricted the franchise, dominated the political system, and thwarted the entrepreneurial vitality that threatened to overturn the state’s agrarian society.
There is much to recommend Dunn’s book, especially for those who, like me, have only the foggiest notion of Virginia history between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It makes fascinating reading, and I recommend it to the readers of the Bacon’s Rebellion blog. While the slave-holding aristocracy undoubtedly did hamper Virginia’s evolution to an industrial economy, it strikes me, based upon information that Dunn herself provides, that there was more to the story.
What most intrigued me was Dunn’s chapter, “Roads, Canals and Railroads: Moving in Place,” which chronicled Virginia’s “transportation policy” of the early 19th century. Although Virginia lacked the economic vitality of the northern states, it was not entirely devoid of entrepreneurial energy. The Old Dominion took part in the canal-building mania that gripped the nation around the turn of the century. Business interests launched canals along the James River and the Potomac River with the goal of breaching the barrier of the Blue Ridge the Alleghenies to link up with the fast-developing Ohio River Valley.
The investors in the James and Potomac canals, along with Tidewater planters, were among the first in the 1820s to oppose the development of railroads in Virginia, especially lines leading into the interior of the state that might have competed with the canals. Even into the 1850s, their influence held sway in the General Assembly, where legislators killed proposals for the expansion of railroads in some parts of Virginia…
The canal interests ultimately hampered the economic growth of the entire state. A vital line, only 15 miles long, from the Midlothian coal district to Richmond was delayed again and again.
It’s not clear to me how this represents a failure of the Jeffersonian vision of limited government. Rather, it looks like a classic case of a failed government program, in which Virginia’s scarce investment capital was misallocated by a government board driven by political considerations rather than economic ones.
By the 1850s, Virginia had built 2,000 miles of railroads. Nineteen different companies operated rail lines. But the lines were often unconnected and had incompatible gauges; Richmond was served by six different rail lines, but there was no central depot for the transfer of cargo or passengers. While Virginia was busy launching under-funded enterprises in response to special-interest lobbying, it failed in a crucial legitimate role that government could have played: creating a blueprint that would have allowed private companies to integrate into a unified system.
By the 1850s, Virginia could boast almost 5,000 manufacturing establishments, writes Dunn. That may have been an impressive number by the standards of the slave-holding states, but it lagged industry and commerce in the North. Dunn argues that “if the state government had energetically supported a network of internal improvements, Virginia might have developed large, vital cities that could have attracted skilled labor, capital and consumers.” Virginia possessed coal and iron deposits – it potentially could have been a leader in the industrial revolution.
“Dominion of Memories” may not have all the answers, but Virginia public policy junkies will find Dunn’s account of the great economic development issues of Virginia’s early 19th century to be fascinating nonetheless.
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